Auction, Estate Sales and a Dumpster

Here he is! My $1 lion. I caught the end of an auction and spied this guy on a cart. His arm was broken off , the plaque and the arm were on the cart with him. No one bid on him, I wanted him but, always wait and act so nonchalant. I had that "ho hum" face and raised my number. I try never to get excited just in case someone else thinks that I know something. A security man helped DH put him in the truck. At home, Nate the giant took him off the truck for us. He said, "that must weigh 200lbs."! Saint Jim bought some landscape adhesive and fixed his arm. Haven't named the lion yet. He's second hand and I LOVE him. Jasmine was the name of the lioness in Second Hand Lions...maybe something related to that movie?
Next, does anyone ever wonder what other's work areas look like? Or do you all even have work areas? We have a large shop but, I TRY to leave that for Saint Jim. I have the workbench in the garage...besides, I've taken over the whole garage itself. I spraypaint outside when it's calm...on a stump. I knew there was a reason that we didn't have that removed when we took that Cottonwood down.

You can see the crate of spray paint on the ground, the drawers have tools and refinishing stuff, frames here and there as I paint them a lot....am always picking them up cheap for future projects.

I picked up this 1960's thingy at an estate sale for .50 cents. One day while vacuuming I thought, I'm painting that aqua!


There it is drying on my workbench. Nearby are frames that are now black. Against the wall is the starfish picture that I bought from OliveRue! It's going in one of the frames.

Here's a picture of the holder and bowls. The little dog cracker holder was at an estate sale, $1.50...it'll all be so much fun on my retro deck the next time that my girlfriends are over for wine and cheese.

Next picture:

Little cow for .25 at an estate sale. He can hold toothpicks. Next to him is a little travel S&P, .50 at an estate sale. I love that. When we travel by car, I like to skip restaurants and picnic in small town parks...that will be perfect. The little S&P's in the background were .50 for all. Nice when having a cookout with multiple tables.

And then, I can't just leave something in the condition that I got it in. I have these cast iron vintage looking stars.

Now all clean and new...in MY colors.

Below are some things...before I messed with them. The pink radio is from a dumpster down the street. It works...not to worry. I only cleaned that up. I had the cast iron bird and the spoon and fork for a little while.

Little bird likes being white now.

The fork and spoon are white and best of all, baling wire hangars.

This is a recent $5 purchace from an estate sale. I totally envisioned it painted black...and leaving the vinyl as it is. My 21 yr. old (Nate the giant) said, "NO, I like it the way it is"! Hmmmm.

Finally! I Have My Camera Back. Frog in the House.

This lady had my camera for a week! You can see by the glasses that she's not a regular person. And look at that slobery baby, I still have days like this.

So, our cat was making a racket around a fan in our house last night. My 17 yr. old checked it out and said, "There's toad in the fan"

So, I had him bring it out on the deck where I was, poor thing, I thought he'd be better off escaping out there! Then I remembered how the 21 yr. old brought a FROG in and put it in our fish tank several weeks ago. By George! It must've been him! He can now escape the not so great indoors.

Hi you poor little sweety, hopefully there'll be more insects out here for you to eat!

Awwww! You have some nice color!

Not to worry, as I sat there lost in my blog reading (I love you guys!). He was gone within the hour. Such a quiet and stealth little guy. I imagined him hopping around our gardens gorging on whatever it is that he gorges on. Godspeed frog! And now that my mother...uh, that lady 4 houses away has returned my camera...I will get around to showing you my estate/auction stuff from last week....it's good.

Oh! And Renee at Cottage Lifestyle (http://cottagelifestyle.blogspot.com/2009/07/gifts-from-garage-sale-gal-and-award.html) gave me an ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE award. Some of you know that I have a program in Al Anon. This means the world to me as so much of my recover IS having an attitude of gratitude. So, for me today, I am grateful for all of my family and their love. I love them just as they are! I love her blog too!

Our Staycation in Nebraska-Old Market, Wineries and a 7 yr. old's BD

We had a marvelous 7 day vacation at home last week! Our brother (DH's brother John) and sister-in-law (Karen) from Ocala, Fl visited us. Little known, there is a lot to do around Omaha, Nebraska. We may have touched on half of what we wanted to do. In the eastern most part of Omaha is the Old Market area. It was built up more than 100 yrs. ago, every thing business and industrial was in this area. Fortunately for us, it has never fallen in to disrepair and has been converted in to shops and restaurants. The first photo is in an antique store there. I love the frosty windows with the vines growing across them. There are vines on so many buildings down there. All of the Streets are still the original brick.

These two guys were priceless! They looked almost like twins. Wish I had gotten my camera out sooner, they even had matching earings and both were eating ice cream cones. We were sitting at an outdoor eating area of a microbrewery....a place called the Upstream. You can not go wrong eating there. A large Farmer's Market is across the street from the Upstream, every Saturday. It was so festive and affordable and had a lot of ethnic vendors with so many special things. I will go back again.

One day we went to Nebraska City to visit the winery at Arbor Day Farms. Karen and I bought a glass of wine (happy hour, $2.50 a glass, have you EVER heard of Happy Hour at a winery?) John is very silly, that's him emptying his glass with his back to us! I'm on the left.

This may surprise some but, my favorite thing in Nebraska City is not wine. Don't judge me! It's a Whispering Bench on the Grounds of Arbor Lodge.

I'm pretty dorky and have the simplest of pleasures so, I don't expect people to appreciate all that I appreciate. But, they were VERY impressed with this. It's on the verge of being spooky, with 60 ft. of this curved bench and a quiet whisper, if your eyes are closed...you would swear your partner is sitting right next to you! Crazy, even during the busy days of falltime, we don't have competition to sit and whisper to each other here. This is a picture of John and Karen trying out the Whispering Bench for the first time.

Here is John standing by the statue of Grover Cleveland in front of the Whispering Bench. John is really funny. I'm rabid about history and Historical Markers. It wasn't too long when he'd see one he'd say, "Hey Cindy, there's your hysterical marker!".

There is a new Pedestrian Bridge in Omaha. It links Omaha, NE and Council Bluffs, Iowa over the Missouri River. There are many nature things around the base of it on the Nebraska side. We bring all of our houseguests there. My husband Jim is walking on the left, John on the right. John and Karen are also the relatives that we go on cruises with. Can't wait for our cruise in November.


Last but not least, it was our little designer Alex's 7 th birthday on July 5th. Here she is with her silly dad (my brother in law) and my mother. She's itching to come back to my house and organize and decorate a bit with me! I'm so glad that we have another generation in our family who loves to junk and paint and decorate. Life is good!